


It's a Filthy Goddamn Helpless World

by MostFacinorous



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Revenge, school shooting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-04
Updated: 2012-11-04
Packaged: 2017-11-17 23:31:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/554407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MostFacinorous/pseuds/MostFacinorous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you spend your life being invisible, you pay attention to the other invisible people. </p><p>When they suddenly aren't invisible any more, you feel betrayed, alone, and unworthy. </p><p>Greenberg is about to prove that he isn't, in the only way he knows how.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Note

I don't want to demand answers. 

I don't want to ask why no one ever stood up when the Coach decided it was open season on Greenberg. I don't want to know why every other outcast in school suddenly banded together, why they suddenly had each other and confidence, suddenly got buff and made over… 

I tried. 

I tried faking it, tried putting on the same mask they did, and I couldn't. I couldn't be what came so suddenly, so easily for them. 

I worked my shitty after school job and I splurged on a leather jacket to look like one of them, even though I wasn't. I hoped every one else would assume I was, but if they did they didn't say so. 

Everyone seemed completely oblivious. No one noticed that people around us were dying, that the official story of mountain lions is bullshit, that these kids were growing up so fast and out of no where, no one ever notices. 

No one ever noticed me. 

I'm not… bad looking. I'm not fat, or skinny. I'm sort of middle of the road. Everything about me is just normal. My hair isn't light, or dark. It's middling. My eyes, too, not that you can see them behind the glasses, but whatever. No one ever got close enough to try. My face still breaks out, sometimes. Seems like no big deal, but suddenly you can play connect the dots on my forehead and I want to rip the skin off, just carve it all out. 

My grades aren't great. You'd think with all the ignoring that happens, at least I wouldn't have a social life as a distraction, but you know, somehow it's exactly the opposite. No one pays attention to me, so I pay too much attention to them.

You've heard of people feeling someone staring, but apparently I don't even leave that much of an imprint on the world. 

I will, though, watch me. I'll leave an imprint they won't stop talking about for years.   
There will probably be a statue or a plaque or something, and people will notice, and they'll look up old pictures of me to publish, and maybe someone will write an essay that the school paper will publish, and there will be a whole page in the year book. 

I just want someone to turn around when I talk to them. Want someone to respond to questions and not just brush me off. Want to not be the butt of every joke in the locker room. 

Why them? Why not me? What's so terribly wrong with me that whatever little club, or cult, or gang, or whatever it is, why am I not invited? Why won't they even—no, the time for pity is over. It's too late, and I can't do it any more.   
I'm not coming home today. I know that, and by now, so do you. I'll be really fucking surprised if you even bothered to read this far without calling the cops. Really, really surprised. 

Frankly, though? I hope you're too late. I hope I've already walked in, done up like death, and put a bullet into the skull of each one of their suddenly perfect faces. I hate them, so much. 

We never spoke. I never worked up the courage, but I could always look at them and know I wasn't the only one suffering, I wasn't the only one alone and hating school, and someday, someday it would get better. 

Can you believe I was happy for them, at first? I was. Good for them, getting their lives together. One after the next, and I was… I was so hopeful. Fucking pathetically hopeful, even.   
Whatever it was, whoever it was, they were noticing the same people I had, my imaginary circle of friends, the ones that were lonely and angry and sad, the ones that didn't fit in, and were outcasts.   
And it fixed everything, it made them… whatever happened to them, it just was an overnight change, and suddenly they were better than they'd ever been before, in every way.   
I waited, do you understand? I waited for it to happen to me, but I'm not even good enough for that, not interesting enough, not noticeable enough… I'm invisible and I always have been and I can't be that any more. 

So I'm going to school now. And I took dad's gun.   
And if you find this, then it's probably too damn late. 

The world is a fucking awful place. I hope you realize. You play like it's nice, but it isn't. You pretend that it gets better, that all the fighting and the suffering and the effort is somehow worthwhile, but look around you! Nothing ever changes, nothing ever gets better, and I won't, and I can't—I can't live like this. I can't be invisible and unmemorable. 

I don't want to demand answers. I want to demand revenge. I want to demand retribution. This isn't about the past, or how they thought I wasn't good enough. This is about how I am, how I can show them that not only am I good enough, I'm better than them. 

And this is about being remembered, for once in my life. 

Today's my birthday.   
Today, I am going to die. 

Jeff Greenberg


	2. The Deed

He left the letter in the microwave, for when his mom got home and made herself her usual microwave dinner.

They didn't eat together, and hadn't for years. She worked shifts that would bring her home, exhausted, at around 1 pm.  
She'd fix herself a frozen meal, eat, shower, and fall asleep.

When he got home from working at the grocery store, chugging monsters, bagging other peoples' food and buying stuff for his own household at the end of his shift, he would usually have to be careful not to wake her up. But not today.

No, today she would be woken up, probably by the police. Or reporters.

Today someone would wake her up and remind her that she had a son. Remind her that he had spent the last few years of his life utterly alone, forced to say the same few sentences to strangers day after day, and never having any other chance of normal human interaction. That this would be the third of his birthdays unremarked upon, uncelebrated. Forgotten.

Stray dogs got better treatment than that, and they were starving.

Today, he was giving himself the gift of immortality.  
He skipped the bus. Took his time, left early, walked slowly, sipped at the last can of monster he was planning on ever drinking, kept his hood up.

The school was still locked when he got there, but he had a pair of lock cutters. In through the front door without a second thought.

The note writing hadn't set him back as long as he'd thought it would take, and that was good.

He let himself into the office, took out the schedules. He knew where most of them would be, throughout the day, but he needed to get to them all at once. Maybe all together. He knew some of them arrived together in a sleek black car, like something a drug dealer would drive. He could meet them there, take care of those ones… but he'd miss some of them. And he wanted all of them. Wanted to paint the walls with them and make them see what they had missed out on.

The sun was coming up now.

This would be messy. He'd have just a few minutes to make it to four different class rooms, through people panicking and reacting and trying to play the hero.

He was the hero. No one would steal that from him. If anyone so much as came towards him, he'd drop them like flies.

He had a full second magazine.

Sound, from outside the office doors.

Three of them came in. Two, and the older guy. What were they doing here?

Anxiety spiked, discomfort. Self consciousness. He ducked behind the desk.

He was painted like a freak. He could play it off as a dumb kid's practical joke, go home, get the note, play sick, no one would notice.

"Hunters." The other guy said, and Stilinski probably spazzed. There was crashing sounds, like he'd windmilled and hit something.

"What? Why? Are you sure?" McCall. He was the first of them, with his stupid sudden skill at lacrosse and his gorgeous girlfriend and suddenly Lydia liked him—and Lydia was the real true sign of making it. She spoke to him, sat with him—sat with him and his friend Stilinski. No one would sit with the sheriff's son… everyone was afraid he'd narc on them for every tiny infraction of the law… hell, if you got on his bad side, his dad could show up with a warrant and accuse you of pirating music or some shit.

Stilinski being able to hang out with more people, better people, than him? Just more proof of the unfairness of the world.  
It made him angry all over again. He stood.

"Woah, hey, hey there um…" Stilinski fished for a name, and he grimaced and all but hissed it, beyond angry that they could laugh at him, day in and day out, and not ever recognize him.

"Greenberg."

"Yeah, hey man, fancy meeting you here. We were just uh, going to steal some yearbook photos for some fake IDs. What're… what're you doing here, all dressed up?" Scott asked.

It was dark, his hood was up, how could Scott tell? The other guy was getting all huffy, clenching and unclenching his hands, getting nervous.

The gun was still in his back pack.

"I was looking for you actually. Wanted to show you something."  
He swung the backpack off, set it on the desk, and unzipped it, keeping his eyes on the three of them.

McCall and Stilinski traded a look, and the zipper was loud in the utter silence.

"It's uh… a little dark to see anything, isn't it?" Stiles asked, turning to look back over his shoulder at hulking and huffing.

"Don't worry, you'll be able to see this just fin—" he pulled the gun out and leveled it at the Sheriff's kid, but was surprised by the other guy pushing Stilinski back, and behind him.  
The dude growled, like, real to life growled, and the sun rising must have fucked up Greenberg's vision, because the guy's eyes flashed, except it was more like they glowed. Like a cat. But… red.

The guy came forward a step, and he squeezed off a round. Two.

He took them, recoiled, and all he did was falter.

He looked surprised, like he didn’t think that Greenberg would shoot him. They all looked surprised.

Scott held his hands up.

"Hey! Hey, stop! What do you want?" He asked, at the same time as Stilinski came forward, supporting the bleeding but still standing guy from behind.

His hands were shaking, the gun flipping around as his muscles spasmed against his will, and even his voice warbled.

"I just wanted you to know I exist. I wanted to be like you." The guy he'd shot looked up sharply.  
"Everyone else, all the other loners and losers, they're friends with you, they're strong and fast and hot, and I… you didn't ask me, why didn't you ask me?" He sounded so desperate… he hated it, hated himself, hated how weak everything was. This was bullshit. Filthy fucking helpless bullshit.  
He wasn't helpless. He'd just shot a guy.

"Greenberg…" the guy was talking now, grunting and wheezing, obviously in pain, and the part of his brain that should be happy or scared maybe was just numb. It just sat there saying, you did that. He's bleeding and you did that. "This is my fault." He said, and Jeff smiled.  
"Good." He said, and he fired off another round, this time hitting the guy in the thigh.

He went down.

"Jesus, stop! Just—this is not how you make friends!" Stilinski sounded panicked now. Now it was him who sounded desperate.

"He doesn't want to make friends. Not any more." Scott had inched closer, and was trying to circle around the desk. Jeff moved the gun to train it on his head, even though his hands were still shaking. His finger was still on the trigger.

"Tell me why. Give me one goddamn reason I shouldn't just kill you and then go take out your other too good for me friends?" He was high pitched, high strung, and his finger was sweating against the metal, the hard plastic of the grip digging into his palms.

Scott kept his hands up, but he kept circling closer, and Stilinski was kneeling by the guy on the floor's side, watching the whole thing with his hand on his phone.

"Stop!" Greenberg yelled, and swung the gun to aim at Stilinski, but kept his eyes on Scott. "Phones. Give them to me now… and you, I swear, you come any closer and I will blow your boyfriend's brain out."

Scott and Stilinski never were apart, unless Scott was with Allison. He'd noticed. He'd seen Stilinski chasing after Scott and muttering about how attractive he was and whether or not Stilinski was attractive to gay men. He got it.

He was even heteronormative—how could they have friends when he couldn't?

"Look, Greenberg. I'm sorry. We're all sorry. We've been preoccupied by the... well we've been in a turf war lately, you know?" Scott was using some kind of bullshit calming soothing voice.  
"I don't fucking care!" he shouted, and Stilinski jumped. He didn't think, the action just made him pull the trigger, and at the same time Scott was on him, and he was falling back, and then a sharp pain and—

 

They ruled it self defense, and an accident. His neck must have broken. Scott was a hero.

They found the note.

They wrote it off to teenage angst. Said he was troubled. Paranoid.

He got his page in the yearbook.

Coach Finstock was put on mandatory administrative leave, while they investigated, asked people about his treatment of Greenberg.

The funeral was small.

Derek Hale attended, and even though he'd been one of the first people to arrive on the scene after hearing the gunshots while out for a jog, he looked guilty, for some reason.

Scott McCall was there too. He just looked solemn.

Stiles came later, with a can of monster that he sat on the grave, opening it with the arm that wasn't in a sling, before pouring it over the fresh dirt there.

And that was it. There was no immortality to be had. No one to say what a waste it was, no one to sing or cry or mourn him, beyond his mom and dad.

He wouldn't be missed.

And that was the saddest part of all of it.

 

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me at MostFacinorous.tumblr.com!


End file.
